The corneal endothelial tissue inserter relates to medical devices that work with eye tissue and more specifically to a device that retracts an extremely thin layer of donor endothelial eye tissue and then places this tissue within the eye of a recipient.
People have eyes to see. An eye has various parts that receive and focus light upon a retina that converts the light into electrical signals transmitted to a is person's brain for interpretation. In the vicinity of a person, light encounters a cornea as the first part of the eye. The cornea, generally transparent, admits light further into the eye. The cornea has its own constituent parts where the endothelium is the extremely thin, innermost layer of the cornea. Endothelial cells serve an essential purpose to keep the cornea clear, that is, transparent. Normally, fluid, vitreous humor, leaks slowly from inside the eye into the middle corneal layer, or stroma. The endothelium's primary task involves pumping this excess fluid, now aqueous humor, out of the stroma. Without this pumping action, the stroma swells with water, becomes hazy and ultimately opaque leading progressively to blindness. A healthy eye has a perfect balance between the fluid moving into the cornea and fluid being pumped out of the cornea. Upon destruction of endothelium cells by disease or trauma, those cells become lost forever. With too many endothelial cells destroyed, corneal edema and blindness ensue requiring the only therapy, corneal transplantation.
Over the years, various physicians and instrument manufacturers have attempted to collect, to maintain, to remove, and to transplant endothelial cells from a donor eye to a recipient. Physicians have developed the technique of Descemet's stripping with endothelial keratoplasty (DSEK) to repair afflicted corneas. Few, if any instruments and techniques allow for ready transplant of endothelial cells. A precursor technique incises a donor cornea upwardly of five mm and retrieves endothelial cells using an ophthalmic forceps. Upon removing the cells from the donor and then inserting the cells through a five mm opening in a recipient's eye, the forceps far too often crush and damage the endothelial cells and select adjacent tissue in the recipient's eye.